: Think of it this way. You say yourself that the layout of the panels is meant
: to simulate movement. So why not animate? Animation is a medium all about
: movement. You might say that in animation, you have to sacrifice
: complexity because you have to make so many more drawings. This is true,
: and so animation often (but not always) lacks the drawing complexity of
: the comic illustrations, yet offers a far richer experience of motion and
: story.

It's not just 'so many more drawings'.
Even if Levi did not draw with his customary (Beautiful, beautiful) levels of detail and decided to simplify his art to make it cost-effective to animate, animation presents a bevy of challenges.

Consider the first and second part of the "Dying Messenger" scene from The Thief and the Cobbler.

Just in that one minute of animation, a ton of work had to go into fiddly details like making the messenger's crawling from the battlefield engaging to watch, or matching the horse's steps up with the ground and the background during the pan.

Animation can do fight scenes better than comics? I guess... but at a price. It's expensive, time consuming, and difficult. I mean, you've seen how the asians animate their fight scenes, right? Tons of still frames, or chi attacks that don't require the user to move, or the same three poses flashed over and over and over and over and... ugh.

Note: I'm not an animation buff, you just happened to catch me on the day I found that blog.

: Alright, but what if you want to keep the illustrations? I say make a picture
: book. One of the drawbacks to comics is the simplicity of the text
: compared to novels. They were originally conceived for children who
: couldn't read books. So, write a novel, offing a far denser and richer
: possibility for the words, and have every other page be an illustration.
: You keep the art, but make the text better.

For future reference, Cody, the above is called a "Light Novel". It does have its advantages, and I've got the perfect case study: Erfworld.
It started out as a webcomic, but some of the artist's life problems meant that she could not keep up with the schedule, she started doing illustrations for text updates.

The result: the Erfworld comic is better at worldbuilding and action, the Erfworld text updates are better at navel gazing and characterization.

There have been times in my fanfiction career when I've looked at a passage focusing on combat and though "Man, this would be easier if I could draw."

: If you want to have it both ways like comics do, you lose a lot and are just
: mediocre at everything, whereas a picture book, or animation excel at and
: are unmatched in what they bring.

Hmm...
Nope. Not in agreement.

: There is a reason why comic books are obscure, and often start to get
: attention when films are made from them! They do nothing well as a medium,
: which is why they are essentially storyboards for movies nowadays.

Just out of curiosity, is that opinion shared by a number of your acquaintances in Hollywood?

: I never dismiss a medium without looking at the 'best of', and yes I've
: looked at all those, and it doesn't change my mind. What I see are good
: ideas held back by the medium.

I dunno.
Could Transmetropolitan have gotten greenlit as an animated movie? Would it have been as effective were it a novel, or even a light novel? A lot of its charm lies in the scenery showing how much of a black comedy crapsack world The City is, and comics can show that almost effortlessly.

And then there's Order of the Stick. The artwork is so simple, it ought to be relatively easy to animate, but I'm not sure what it'd really gain. There's not a whole lot of epic fight scenes, and a lot of the early humor came from parodying the DnD combat rules, which rely on a turn-based approach to combat. And if you turned it into a novel, even a light novel, a ton of jokes rely on visual gags.